


White Horses

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-10
Updated: 2008-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-06 23:33:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They change things without asking, you know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Horses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vivier](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=vivier).



They change things without asking, you know. They change, and expect you to change with it and wonder what goes on if you don't respond to the pulley strings the way they would like you to. I'd take you down, down, down the rabbit hole, but I don't think we'll come out on the other side all right. Night turns to light and burns the sky, and we'll be trapped in the holes we've made.

They think I've gotten better, and now they don't tell me anything anymore. They've changed the rules without asking and they expect me to be able to keep up. If I can't, I've relapsed, need to resettle, recalibrate and reintegrate. They fear I've lost my mind, that I've had one to begin with, that somehow I've tumbled and fallen and can't get up. They don't feel the boundaries I've created, the progress I've already made. They only see the path I've yet to walk, that somehow I'm still lacking and only resemble a girl.

I used to dance, and they don't like it when I dance now. It reminds us all about the dance with knives and blades and a sweep of axe in a graceful arc to decapitate the nightmares that crawl beneath my skin. _I feel you._

I try not to pry, to sink beneath the recesses of their minds. I keep out of the gyri and sulci, keep to the stars and astrophysics and the gravitational pull between worlds in the black. It's simpler that way, and I try to drop my speech to monosyllabic monotone, keep the cadence to something that resembles actual speech and not fragments of tangential thoughts spinning out of control. Most of the time I succeed, so that even Jayne can follow the direction my thoughts can travel, but it's harder than it looks on some days. I'm reluctant to admit the truth, that there are so many parallel tracks at any given time that I have to reach out and ground myself to keep it all in check. I shiver and shake, the ground quakes beneath my feet, and the objects spin past my vision like horses in a stampede. White horses. Flashbulb lights, whitebrightlights, overhead lights, surgical grade lights over a bed and pins in my skull to locate and delineate where the cuts should be made. My head hurts, though that's fallacious. Brain matter has no internal nervous system to register pain; that's all dura mater and vasculature being pulled and stretched past sinus capacity.

When we dance, my shadow and I, I can almost remember and tolerate the girl I used to be. I can almost feel her, ghost along my spine, the graceful curl of her wrist as she wrote. I feel her in my belly, coiled to spring and wreak havoc on the fragile shell I've created here. Her talents were wasted, cut apart. It doesn't matter about quarks and particle physics now; schizophrenics aren't put near particle accelerators no matter what their IQ was prior to their psychotic break, no matter how well controlled they seem. Pirouette and fall, shatter and shake. It's all there somewhere, in the pieces, if only they fit back together. But some of the pieces are gone, they're missing or they don't fit quite right, but backwards can't function, backwards is not forwards is not well. I'm better, but not well. Simon doesn't know the difference.

Light turns into darkness, accelerators drop, air recyclers kick in, gravity wheel turns over. Deeper into the whirlpool of stars, deeper into night and I curl inward around the girl she used to be, that girl in the lofted room looking out over the stars. She thought she could save the world, figure out a way to reset the terraforming, do something to offset the quiet looks and whispered plans behind the walls in the estate. The girl thought she could escape into academia, shelter herself beneath a mound of books and isolate herself away from the razored whispered society mavens who would wipe out a lineage with scorn and a well-placed rumor. But I'm dressed in white noise and paperthin film, sounds and thoughts and feelings swirl and eddy and dissolve in a veil of tears. I hear the hum in my spine and the echo of hoofbeats in the recyclers. No one understands why I'd rather stay with the ghosts on the bridge, feel the echo of life than the thrill of conversation. Head down, heart in mouth, stomach plummeting to ice cold toes. Keep the vision intact, keep it all down tight. Eyes closed, don't see the chills coming or the ghosts in the walls that you shouldn't see. Yes? Yes.

I want to fly, flay, fly. Yes, fly. Close my eyes and let go, let it all in, let it swirl about and get confused without the second-guessing conflicts that would return with a vengeance. Hear the synchonicity of the stars going nova, the frost on the wings trickle and melt, the ship hum and thrum and skip across gravity wells gleefully. Let the swirling emotions fall like raindrops, pool in my toes and keep them warm. But they need you, screaming "Be like me!" and "Think like me!" and "Conform to my regulations or there will be dire punishment!" with every look and tightened jaw. It tightens about me, and they don't understand. I don't want to be like you, I don't want to feel like you, I don't want to feel like this. But this is all I have, and the whispers in the walls are the only kind of comfort I can gather. Intelligence drops over time, psychosis burns the neurons in a pattern I can't quite grasp but it's a kindling effect. Over time I lose matter, ventricles expand, more cerebrospinal fluid to bathe the neurons firing in unconcerted orchestra. Let Simon close his eyes and breathe in Kaylee and comfort himself with the thoughts that this isn't truly psychosis, this isn't truly schizophrenia and it's all an effect of neurosurgery. But we know better, you and I, don't we? We know what lies beneath the flap of bone that keeps the brain in check. We know what lies ahead in this, the empty bunk and the confines of steel and sleep and space. We know how this works, even if he can't bring himself to admit the truth. Surgeons cut out the wasted bits of flesh that corrupt, surgeons fix and heal physical manifestations of illness and injury. How do you pull apart what was put together wrong but you don't know how it was to start with? Puzzle pieces out of place, cut and glued together to fit. I know how this works, even if he doesn't want to.

They change things. It doesn't stay static, but they pin me beneath the glass and have me watch with amber eyes as they move on from me. Their laser eyes are chilling, see through me and into the empty holes behind me. I don't want to see their eyes, the empty gaze and pity. I don't want to feel the concern curdle in my belly and taste like acid.

Jayne shakes me awake if I fall asleep at the yoke, human concern startling beneath empty muscle and twitching sinew and synapse. He pushes me out and looks at the stars. I wonder if he knows why I like it here, that the horses can't come to follow me when the stars are out and the gentle glow bathes instead of eviscerates.

I'll take you to tears, cradle you in adversity, bed you down amidst nightmares. Maybe then you'll understand, the boundaries and limits and press of space and time.

But they change things, and don't realize that they'll shred the walls that keep the white horses in their pens, safety shroud in place. Shut down, accuse of negative symptoms and a medication change necessitation. No, no, no. Their thoughts are too loud sometimes, too much, too much, things that twist and burn and rend to pieces.

Float between the worlds, drift in between, hover amongst the stardust and hope that eyes won't see the panic and pain and tears simmering beneath the surface. Let them see what they must, let them feel what they must. I have to hold it together, I have to do it on my own. They don't understand, they change the rules, they reformat the disc before it's properly written.

Maybe there will be a change wherein they will shift enough that I could explicate the intricacies. But it's not likely, not with this crew, not this lifetime.

So I direct the tides and flow around their obstances and simmer beneath their worry, eyes shut tight and lips sealed. Maybe this will keep it all at bay, just a little bit longer.

 

End.


End file.
